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I agree with what you say about the behavior of Democrats in the past on the torture issue. I can't help but hold out hope, though, that this time, Sheldon Whitehouse's question on waterboarding has put the Bush administration in a corner. By demanding no less than a statement that waterboarding is torture and therefore unconstitutional, the Democrats put Mukasey in an impossible place. He knows that the Bush administration has made waterboarding quasi-legal through its secret memos, and that those who have engaged in waterboarding have received quasi-immunity. (We all know this). So he can't say it is unconstitutional or illegal without jeopardizing that part of the Bush administration's secret structure. But he also cannot come out and say that waterboarding, which is so obviously a practice of repeatedly simulating the death of the prisoner, is constitutional.
There's nothing Mukasey can say on this. Let's just hope that the Democrats don't back down.
